The Betrayal of Father Tuck: An Outlaw Chronicles short story (3 page)

Marie-Anne began to cry again, but silently this time and Tuck took a firmer grip on her small hand but offered no comment.

‘Then he forced me,’ she said, with the tears spilling down her cheeks. ‘I fought him, I truly fought him. But he hit me, he overpowered me; he is very strong for such a small man, and at one point I thought to myself, Why not just let him do his business and this will all be over. And, perhaps then, I fought a little less hard. And he was very soon done. But it will never be over, will it, Tuck? Because of Hugh, because of my darling little boy, it will never truly be over.’

Tuck once again took her into his arms, and held her tightly to his wide chest while the grief welled out of her.

‘All that is past now, my dear – that beast will not hurt you again, I swear it. I will never let that happen. I would take his life first, even if it were to cost my Salvation.’

‘It is not Murdac that I truly fear, Father – it is Robin. What will he say when he comes home and sees Hugh? What will he do when he finds that I have brought up a cuckoo in his nest? Will he ever be able truly to love these “soiled goods”?’

‘He will love you nonetheless,’ said Tuck. ‘If he is any sort of a man, he will continue to love you just as before. You are not to blame, my dear. You must not think it. You were forced. You were violated. God knows that you are innocent. There can be no blame adhering to you. And Robin must understand that. He will understand that.’

‘Men say that. You are not at fault, they say. You have been cruelly wronged, they say. But inside they feel that you are besmirched. A voice inside will always ask – was she truly forced? Did she protest enough?’

‘Nonsense, my dear,’ said Tuck. ‘No sensible man could think in that way.’

But he knew in his heart of hearts that he lied.

***

‘Murdac attack her? She’s imagining it,’ said William, Lord of Edwinstowe. ‘The woman has run mad. I thought she was acting a little strangely during her visit – distant and odd. Did you see her wantonly smash that wine glass? Murano work, too. Priceless. No, she’s queer in the head. I know Sir Ralph Murdac quite well. Not the nicest man in the world, I grant you, bit of an ill-mannered lout, really, but he would never attack the Countess of Locksley in her own castle. It’s patently absurd.’

It was three days later and Father Tuck had returned to the home of Robin’s elder brother. He had petitioned for an audience with the lord of the castle and had been granted it. Now he was fighting the urge to grasp his host by the shoulders and shake him roughly, to bang his head against a convenient wall until he saw sense.

‘My lord,’ Tuck said, ‘your sister-in-law is truly in grave danger. She humbly requests your aid in her time of dire need.’

Lord Edwinstowe did not appear to be listening. ‘You say Murdac wants to marry her? Well, even if Robin is dead – and it sounds very much as if he is – he can’t do so without her consent. She’s a freeborn woman and no man’s ward. Tell her just to say no to him. A firm but courteous no, that should do the trick.’

Tuck bit his bottom lip until the blood ran over his teeth and down the back of his throat. This irritating man seemed to think that the situation would blow over. But Tuck was conscious of his oath to Marie-Anne. He could not fully explain to William why Murdac wished to possess her in marriage – he could not explain that Murdac sought to have his only son, Hugh – without breaking his word. The priest felt the promise made to his mistress that tearful night like a dead weight around his shoulders.

‘My lord, if you would merely send her a couple of dozen of your men-at-arms to reinforce the Kirkton garrison, that might suffice. We could hold Murdac off for months, I believe, with an extra twenty, or thirty, experienced fighting men. With another forty, and a little determination, we could hold out indefinitely.’

‘No, I don’t think so. I’m not sending my trained men-at-arms across the country on a deluded woman’s whim. They are needed here. The answer must be no. Tell her to be firm with this importunate young fellow. Courteous but firm.’

***

A week later, a little before noon, above the keep of Kirkton a blue flag flapped lazily from the tall pole. As the material furled and unfurled, the white hawk of Locksley could be glimpsed sporadically. The Countess and her confessor stood below it, on the heavy wooden battlements above the main gate, and looked east down the slope, past the little church of St Nicholas, and up the sunken road that stretched along the northern shoulder of the Locksley Valley all the way to Sheffield.

The road was crammed with men and horses, carts and wagons, scores, perhaps hundreds of folk and their beasts, coming from the east. The men were clad in dark surcoats, with the occasional glimpse of grey mail beneath; the steel of hilt, blade and buckle flashed in the sunlight and the mass of bodies came on under a slim forest of upright spears. And, at the head of this advancing army, Tuck could clearly make out a huge black banner slashed with three blood-red chevrons – the standard of Sir Ralph Murdac. To the south-east, there were yet more men on foot coming up the green slopes, surging up the narrow farm track that led down to the river, and spilling out of the road and over the cropped grass of the Locksley pastures.

‘A hammer to crack a hazelnut,’ muttered Tuck to himself. And then more loudly, ‘He must have emptied Nottinghamshire of half its fighting men to raise such a host, my lady. I believe he has at least three or maybe even four hundred men under arms. He really must be the Prince’s favourite courtier these days.’

Marie-Anne said nothing. A brisk September breeze tugged at the loose, trailing, pointed sleeves of her snugly fitting blue linen gown. She could feel the cold promise of autumn in its whispering breath and wished she had brought a cloak with her up on the battlements, for she did not want to appear to be shivering with fear.

A man-at-arms, a short, thick-chested Welshman in a dark green cloak, with a tall bow in his right hand and a full arrow bag at his waist, came bustling along the walkway to the pair.

‘My lady, they are about to come within range of our bows. Do you want us to thin their ranks just a little? Teach these dogs some better manners?’

‘No, Gwen, but thank you,’ said Marie-Anne smiling at the commander, the vintenar as he was called, of her small contingent of twenty archers that made up roughly half the permanent Kirkton garrison. ‘There is a time for fighting and a time for talking. We will see just what they have to say for themselves first.’

As the vintenar turned to go, Tuck took his arm and said quietly in Welsh, ‘Gwen, be a good lad, will you, and fetch me a spare bowstave, a couple of strings and a full arrow bag. You’d better find me a sword, too.’

As Tuck and Marie-Anne looked on, the dark-clad army spilled out into the land to the north of the church and began spreading out, moving like a stain over the pastures near the castle and settling into groups of twenty or thirty men. The men-at-arms gathered under the banners of their knights and captains, and began to pitch tents or build crude huts, or just slumped to the ground, wearied by the long march. Soon the enemy filled a wide semi-circle of land to the north and east. And they were clearly planning to remain there for some time. Tuck watched a party of men start to dig a latrine trench; other men were hammering stakes into the green turf for the horse lines. Some four hundred yards north of the castle, well out of range of even the most powerful bow, a score of liveried servants were setting up a pavilion, a striking red-and-black-striped affair, and Tuck thought that he could make out a small form dressed entirely in black seated beside it on an X-shaped chair and conferring with a pair of taller knights.

The distant three men spoke for a while and then the small man rose to his feet; the group separated, each went to his horse and mounted it, and before long the trio were picking their way on horseback through the bustling crowds of the enemy directly towards the castle. The knight on the right was carrying a long spear shaft on which floated a snowy white banner.

Sir Ralph Murdac clearly wished to talk.

Tuck and Marie-Anne watched in silence as the riders approached. They reined in their horses directly in front of the barred main gate, twenty feet below the priest and his mistress.

Ralph Murdac looked up at the Countess of Locksley, smirking like a procurer of women approaching a potential client.

‘I am back, my dear,’ he said. ‘Just as I promised. And I have brought a few hungry friends home for dinner.’

The two knights on either side of the little man looked at their horses’ necks as though embarrassed by their lord’s levity.

‘You are not welcome here, Ralph Murdac, as you very well know,’ said Marie-Anne. ‘And neither are your cowardly lackeys. I command you to take your men-at-arms and quit my lands this instant. I shall not tell you again.’

‘Come, come, my dear, that is not the welcome fit for your future husband. Most ungracious. And after I have gone to the trouble of bringing you a special gift.’

Murdac poked the left-hand knight in the ribs with his finger and the man fumbled with a dark bundle hanging from his saddle; he attached it to the tip of his lance and, using both hands, he hoisted the package up to the top of the palisade, where Tuck, reaching down over the battlements, was able to grasp it.

The priest untied the string that bound the sombre cloth together and shook out the bundle. It was a broad sheet of linen, dyed black and decorated with three blood-red chevrons – the drab standard of the House of Murdac. Marie-Anne glanced at the black flag and looked away again in disgust.

‘I shall give you one hour, my dear,’ said Murdac. ‘In that time I want to see these gates opened wide for my men to enter freely, and that proud banner flying from the top of the pole yonder. Or I will be forced to come over these walls with all my men and hoist it myself with a rope made from your lovely long hair.’

‘This parley is over,’ said Tuck. ‘Get you gone now, Ralph Murdac, or I will come down there myself and rip you asunder from collar to cock – flag of truce notwithstanding.’

Murdac ignored him. ‘You have just one hour, my lady.’ And he turned his horse and cantered away back to his encampment.

***

The allotted time seemed to pass in an eye-blink. Tuck remained on the battlements, now armed for war, and watching over the army of the erstwhile Sheriff of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and the Royal Forests, as it went about the business of making itself comfortable. Marie-Anne retreated to the hall and could be seen from time to time striding about the courtyard and issuing clipped orders to her servants. When the full hour had passed, Tuck was startled from a reverie by a huge cheer – a rippling, crowing sound of triumph and joy – coming from the ranks of the enemy in the now-muddy fields below the castle.

He turned and looked up, at the place where the blue-and-white flag of Locksley had fluttered bravely all morning, and he saw that the Countess’s cheerful insignia was being hauled slowly down the pole by a pair of servants who were skylined on the roof of the square keep.

He sighed.

They were attaching a new flag, Tuck could see, to the ropes. But the servants seemed unfamiliar with the attachments of this new standard, and there was much fumbling and the faint sounds of Yorkshire cursing wafted down to his ears. Finally, they hauled on the ropes and a dark bundle rose into the sky, to the summit of the pole. At the top of its journey, it opened and flapped in the wind, to reveal a crude image of an oak tree, white on a green field, with huge leaves and six massive acorns nestled in the foliage.

William, Lord of Edwinstowe, climbed to the top of the wooden steps that led to the battlements. He came to stand next to Father Tuck and together they both looked over the encampment, listening to their enemies’ joyful cheers turn to shouts of rage.

‘Do you really think they will attack?’ said Lord Edwinstowe.

‘Undoubtedly,’ said Tuck.

‘And can we hold them?’

‘Undoubtedly!’ Tuck smiled warmly at the baron. ‘With the forty extra men-at-arms that you have so generously brought us, my lord, we could hold these strong walls until Hell freezes over – or, at the very least, until Robin returns to Kirkton, as he must surely do any day now. Indeed, I have heard rumours that he is already in England.’

Then Tuck touched his companion’s arm; a strange, guilty light seemed to shine in his nut-brown eyes. ‘My lord, you will not speak of the matter I vouchsafed to you, to Robin or anyone else, of the lady’s… ah… dishonouring.’

William looked hard at the priest. ‘She has not been dishonoured. She has been cruelly wronged by that lecherous beast Murdac. And it is to prevent her, or any other member of my family, suffering further injury at that foul dog’s hands that my men and I stand here today. But I will not speak of it again, Father, rest assured. I have already sworn that to you, at Edwinstowe. I do not wish to have salacious tales concerning members of my family bandied about. And I charge you, equally, on your honour, to say no more on this matter to anyone. Ever.’

‘Thank you,’ said Tuck.

***

The enemy formed up in companies of fifty to sixty men-at-arms, each commanded by two or three knights; four companies in all, perhaps half of their full strength, Tuck calculated, as he watched the men being roughly pushed into their positions by the captains and their vintenars. Three of the companies had been formed down by the church, two hundred and fifty yards to the south-east, three dark blocks of foot soldiers under three gaudy, fluttering banners. They had ladders, the priest noted, plenty of them, but there was no sign of artillery, none of the big machines for hurling great stones at the wooden battlements – presumably Murdac did not feel the need. And no battering ram, as far as he could tell. The men would come on confidently, straight at the front gate, set their ladders and attempt to scramble up and over the wall, trusting to their superior numbers to give them the advantage over their well-protected enemies above. More than a hundred and fifty men would come against the main gate in one swift overwhelming rush. And Kirkton had half that number to repulse them. And while it was trying to keep the barbarians from the gates, the fourth company, held in reserve well to the north of the castle, would no doubt choose its moment and attack from the flank.